Constitutional Convention Resolution
Preamble
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for the people to reform the political bands that have connected them with one another to secure their liberties, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should unite and take the action necessary to do this.
These liberties, first documented for us by the Declaration of Independence, are evidenced by our Constitution, which established new political bands to secure for us certain self-evident and unalienable rights, including Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Yet, we observe that our government has become destructive to these ends, thereby igniting our right to rearrange the bands that connect us to each other by laying on their foundations principles of harmony and reverence, by restoring a proper allocation of powers intended by the Constitution, and by supplying the methods of government most likely to secure these liberties for ourselves and our posterity.
Prudence dictates that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes, but experience has shown that we are more disposed to suffer evils than to right ourselves by abolishing them. However, when a long train of abuses and usurpations have infected our political bands and replaced our unalienable rights with vested interests, national bankruptcy, demagoguery, and a disregard for our future as a nation, it is our right and duty to reform the political bands of our government to provide new guards for our liberties and future security.
Such has been our patient suffering that it is now necessary that we reform these bands and repair the broken system of our government to remedy its repeated injuries, usurpations, and insults, which inevitably have as their direct consequence the establishment of tyranny over us and our States. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid nation that those who manage our federal government have:
- Violated their sacred trust to put the nation’s interests above their own.
- Relied on pundits irresponsibly and without account instead of common sense.
- Mismanaged the finances of the nation and wasted public monies.
- Misled the people as to the truth of our national condition.
- Used their offices to achieve personal advantages at the expense of the public.
- Imposed obligations on the States without their consent.
- Passed laws without reading them.
- Created agencies with a morass of regulations, which undermine the rule of law.
- Exploited human nature by using the media to distort the truth and raise unjustified expectations.
- Distorted those political bands that made our country great by passing laws and regulations that have reduced regulations, competition, property rights, thrift, creativity, and the work ethic.
We, therefore, the States of the United States of America, in convention duly assembled, appeal to the people to cause their States to ratify these amendments to the Constitution and, for the support of this declaration and with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, resolve as follows:
RESOLUTION
WHEREAS we the States of the United States have determined that forces not in effect in 1787 have come about and now operate in a manner that impede our ability to elect senators and representatives to the Congress who can properly and efficiently represent our common interests and among these forces are those of vested interests, incumbency, careerism, self-interest, procedural rules of Congress, polling, uninformed television, lack of virtue, and a misplaced understanding of public interest and the role of freedom in our society; and
WHEREAS the specific effects of these forces are to cause our national interest to be subordinate to the self-interests of elected representatives, to cause the relevant facts upon which public policy is made to be misrepresented to us, to give influence to irreverent democratic forces that undo the benefits of a republic, to encourage demagoguery to permit the election of persons whose character is inferior to that of the Founding Fathers and generally to cause principle to be subordinate to expediency; and
WHEREAS the result of these effects is that persons are elected who have an improper influence over the course of our country, which results in decisions that diminish the benefits of our form of government, which abuse and betray the trust under which our elected leaders took office and which erode our freedoms; and
WHEREAS two-thirds of the States of the United States have determined it appropriate to amend the U.S. Constitution on the terms and according to the procedures contained herein;
NOW THEREFORE, we the undersigned States acting by our governors, by reason of resolutions duly adopted by two-thirds of our State legislatures, do hereby ordain and establish that there shall be convened according to law a Constitutional Convention for the purpose of amending the U.S. Constitution in the following respects strictly according to the rules of procedure specified below.
1. Rules of Procedure. The Constitutional Convention shall be conducted according to the following rules.
1.1 Robert’s Rules of Order shall apply except the Convention may adopt such other rules and conveniences as were used by the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
1.2 No amendment or additions to the amendments set forth in Section 2 hereof shall be made unless germane to the amendments set forth in Section 2. An objection to germaneness shall be by point of order and shall be ruled on by the Chair. The standards of germaneness shall include the following:
(a) No proposed amendment to the Constitution shall seek to amend any provision of the Constitution not the subject of an amendment identified herein.
(b) All amendments to the proposed amendments herein shall relate to the subject matter of the proposed amendments.
(c) A specific proposed amendment may not be amended by an amendment general in nature.
(d) A general proposed amendment may be amended by an amendment specific in nature.
1.3 The Convention shall not make any amendment, addition, or change any part of the U.S. Constitution not germane to the amendments set forth in Section 2, nor shall it amend, add to, or change, directly or indirectly, any portion of the U.S. Constitution not specified below for amendment, nor shall it amend, add to, or change directly or indirectly, any portion of the Bill of Rights. Any violation of the foregoing prohibitions shall exceed the authority of the Convention and shall be void without affecting the balance of the actions taken.
2. Proposed Amendments. The Constitution shall be amended as follows:
28th Amendment. The following shall replace the first three sentences of the second paragraph of Section 7 of Article I of the Constitution:
Every bill not an appropriation bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate shall, before it becomes a law, be presented to the President of the United States. If he approves, he shall sign it, but if not, he shall return it, with his objections to the House in which it shall have originated, which shall enter the objections at large in its journal and proceed to reconsider it. If after such reconsideration two-thirds of that House shall agree to pass the bill, it shall be sent, together with the objections to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two-thirds of that House, it shall become a law. Every appropriation bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate shall, before it becomes law, be presented to the President of the United States; if he approves, he shall sign it, but if he approves it in part, he shall sign it as to the sections approved and shall return the bill with the parts not approved with his objections to that House in which it shall have originated, which shall thereupon proceed in the manner provided for above with respect to bills which are not appropriation bills. If the parts objected to are not approved as there provided, such parts shall not be law, but the parts approved shall be law.
29th Amendment. The following paragraphs shall be added to Section 9 of Article I of the Constitution:
¶ 1 - No member of any committee of Congress shall serve on such a committee for longer than four terms in the House and two terms in the Senate as those terms are defined in Sections 2 and 3 of Article I of the Constitution.
¶ 2 - Any existing law in conflict with the Twenty-Ninth Amendment shall be void except any law in conflict with Clause 10 of the Thirtieth Amendment shall not be void until two years after its adoption, during which time Congress shall extinguish all prohibited benefits and pay or promise to pay the present value thereof determined actuarially using a discount rate of 10 percent per annum, as of the date of such adoption, to those whose benefits are terminated thereby, with any deferred payment made without interest on such terms and conditions and over such time as Congress shall establish.
¶ 3 - Direct and indirect compensation for members of Congress shall be equal. Compensation for members of Congress and their staff shall be established every four years, beginning on the first day of the second calendar year following the effective date of the adoption of this amendment by a majority vote of a committee of six, two appointed by Congress, two by the President, and two by a majority vote of the governors of the several States, one each for a term of two years and one each for a term of four years with appointments made in like manner every two years for a term of four years. Committee deadlocks lasting more than thirty days shall be resolved by the President upon application of any committee member. Such committee shall have the power to appropriate from the federal treasury such funds as shall be required to perform its duties, including the compensation and expenses of the members thereof, which shall be of public record and never exceed for a committee member the amount established for a member of Congress proportionally reduced to his time of actual service. Appropriations to cover all other costs of operating Congress are reserved to Congress.
¶ 4 - All bills and each and every provision thereof or amendment thereto shall be passed by Congress as provided in the Constitution by votes, and all votes shall be public, be recorded, and be published by voter.
¶ 5 - One-third of the members of each House shall have the right to have a vote by their House on any bill whether in committee or not.
¶ 6 - Both Houses shall agree on a budget for the succeeding year no later than October 1 of the prior year, failing which none of the members thereof shall be qualified to hold elective office in Congress after the expiration of his or her then existing term of office. All future budgets shall be compared to the current year’s budget on both a cash and accrual basis, and such comparison shall be part of the budget.
¶ 7 - No emergency appropriation bill whose purpose is to prevent or mitigate or respond to a loss of life or property or a threat to national security shall be valid if it contains any non-emergency spending authorization.
30thAmendment. There shall be added to Article I of the Constitution the following Section 11:
Cl. 1 - Congress shall have no power to pass any bill for raising revenue or for appropriating money unless it is approved by three-fifths of both Houses;
Cl. 2 - To pass any retroactive bill unless approved by a two-thirds vote of both Houses except Congress shall never impose taxes retroactively.
Cl. 3 - To pass any bill using its power under the Sixteenth Amendment that is effective before the first day of the calendar year following its enactment without a two-thirds vote of both Houses and no such bill shall ever be made subject to a stated term.
Cl. 4 - After the adoption of this amendment, to impose an enforceable duty upon State, local, or tribal governments or entities by which they do business without their written consent or to discriminate against them in the provision of federal assistance, financial or otherwise, because they refuse to consent.
Cl. 5 - To pass any bill limiting the amount of contributions by any United States domiciliary corporation or organization or citizen to any corporation, organization, or person for political purposes involving federal policy or federal candidates nor limiting the expenditures of any of the foregoing as long as both the contributions and expenditures are fully and promptly disclosed to the public by the most public and technological means available for such purpose.
Cl. 6 - To pass any bill unless it sets forth at the beginning thereof a declaration of the purpose thereof and the constitutional power under which it is brought, a statement that the bill is needed in the public interest, a statement that the government can afford the bill, a statement that the government can administer the bill in a way people can respect, a statement of its impact on the freedoms of the citizens, and a statement of its possible unintended consequences.
Cl. 7 - To provide financial assistance to, or purchase any debt securities of, any State or entity by which it does business or subdivisions or municipalities thereof unless the financial assistance or purchase is provided to all States and prorated by population determined by the most recent census or unless approved by a two-thirds vote of both Houses.
Cl. 8 - To exempt itself from any law, or be separately classified so as to be treated differently from the people generally.
Cl. 9 - To appropriate monies, for any year for which a budget has been established by Congress, a sum greater than one-fifth of the Gross Domestic Product of the United States for the prior year as determined by Congress unless the appropriation is approved by a two-thirds vote of both Houses.
Cl. 10 - To pass any bill conferring a retirement, health, pension, or other benefit upon itself or its past, present, or future members or any employee of the United States or agency thereof except the military unless such bill applies generally to all other citizens.
Cl. 11 - To pass any bill delegating to the President the authority to take any action subject to Congress’ disapproval or to increase spending authority related to any government obligations the budget authority for which has not been provided in advance, unless such delegation is necessary and accompanied by clearly defined and ascertainable standards.
31st Amendment. There shall be added at the end of the second paragraph of Section 2 of Article II of the Constitution:
The President shall nominate ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court and all other federal courts established by Congress upon the advice and consent of the Senate within ninety days of any vacancy, and the Senate shall confirm or reject such nomination within 120 days thereafter, whereupon, if the nomination is consented to, the President shall appoint the person so nominated within thirty days. If the President or the Senate, as the case may be, do not timely act, the compensation otherwise payable to the President or members of the Senate and its staff shall be abated without recoupment until such action is taken.
32nd Amendment. There shall be added to Article II of the Constitution a new Section 5 containing five paragraphs:
¶ 1 - All agencies of the federal government having the authority to issue regulations shall receive a priority number by the President by January 1 of each even-numbered year with the highest priority being the lowest number. Conflicts among valid regulations among agencies shall be resolved in favor of the agency having the highest priority. New agencies not having a priority number shall have the lowest priority in the order established unless the President amends his prior prioritization.
¶ 2 - The delegation of legislative power by Congress to the President or any department or executive agency shall be accompanied by standards and shall be strictly construed. If there is any doubt concerning whether a government official has delegated power, the presumption shall be that he does not. Courts shall not defer to the judgment of legislative or executive officials with respect to their power nor accord to them any presumption of authority but shall require strict proof. Whether any regulation is authorized by law is at any trial a question of fact for the trier of fact though the court can reverse a finding that authority exists if it believes as a matter of law there is no authority. No agency to which legislative power is delegated shall have any privilege to withhold information from Congress.
¶ 3 - Except to correct mistakes in regulations that impose greater restrictions on the people than were intended, proposed regulations made by any agency of the United States shall have no effect for any purpose whatsoever until they are adopted, and then their effect shall be prospective.
¶ 4 - No person shall be required to file an application to obtain a right or permit required by law with more than one agency or department and that agency or department shall coordinate as it deems appropriate with other agencies and departments that have an interest in the matter. If more than one agency or department requires an application for permit, the applicant has the right to select which of the agencies or departments shall receive his application unless otherwise specified by law. Any such application shall be acted upon by the agency or department within one year from the filing thereof or shall thereafter be deemed unconditionally approved as filed. A denial, or approval with conditions that are not satisfied within six months from agency action from the applicant’s submission of a satisfaction of conditions, shall be subject to judicial review before the federal court of appeals of the circuit in which the applicant resides.
¶ 5 - Upon request of the House of Representatives, the President shall appear before it while in session to answer questions but not more often than weekly and for not more than forty minutes for each appearance.
33rd Amendment. There shall be added the following two paragraphs to Article V of the Constitution:
¶ 1 - Whenever a majority of the legislatures of the several States propose amendments to this Constitution, they shall file the same with Congress, which shall within four months return the proposed amendments to the legislatures of the several States with such advice as it deems appropriate and, upon such return or upon the failure of Congress to timely make such return, the proposed amendments, with Congress’s return, if any, shall be submitted to the legislatures of the several States and, when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States, the proposed amendments shall be valid to all intents and purposes according to the provisions thereof.
¶ 2 - Any amendment changing the Bill of Rights or the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, or Fifteenth Amendments shall not be valid unless ratified by all the States.
34th Amendment. The following paragraphs shall be added to Article VI of the Constitution:
¶ 1 - Notwithstanding Amendment XXIV, as long as the United States obtains revenue under the Sixteenth Amendment, every citizen of the United States eighteen years or older shall file an income tax return and, notwithstanding any other law or provision of this Constitution, make a tax payment equal to the cost of operating Congress divided by the last census of the population of the United States rounded to the nearest dollar but not more than the cost of one-fourth troy ounce of silver nor less than ten dollars and, upon payment, shall receive evidence thereof, which evidence shall be shown as a condition to the right of such person to vote in any federal election. Such amount until changed by Congress shall be ten dollars and, when changed by Congress, shall be published by the President no later than the first business day after January 1 of each even-numbered year.
¶ 2 - The total size of all regulations issued by all agencies and departments of the United States, measured in bytes of text, shall not exceed four times those contained in all federal statutes; and any regulations in excess of such amount shall be void as of January 1 of each even-numbered year in the reverse order of the promulgating agency’s priority. No later than November 1 of each odd-numbered year, Congress shall publish the bytes of text in all federal statutes effective for the following year and the President shall publish the bytes of text in all regulations of all agencies by priority number for the following year.
¶ 3 - Regulations shall be void ten years after they are effective unless earlier approved by Congress for a stated term. Congress shall have the authority to exempt specified regulations from this provision.
¶ 4 - Unless increased by a majority vote of the State legislatures upon the request of Congress, the total staff answerable to members of the House of Representatives and Senate and their committees shall not exceed twenty-five thousand persons for allocation among them as the members of Congress deem appropriate.
¶ 5 - No person in government, elected, hired, or appointed, shall suppress any information relating to the sighting or existence of extraterrestrial phenomena and shall have a duty to preserve and disclose any such information to the public promptly as it becomes available, including information existing at the time of the adoption of this amendment.
35th Amendment. Amendment X of the Constitution is amended to read as follows:
Section 1. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. Such powers shall include all those powers not expressly delegated to Congress under the Constitution, whether or not those powers existed prior to the adoption of the Constitution or those arising thereafter as a result of the Constitution. The States shall not exercise these powers in a way that diminishes or interferes with the powers expressly delegated by the Constitution to Congress, the President, or the Judiciary.
Section 2. The legislature of each State shall have the power to limit the terms of the senators and representatives in Congress representing such State.
Section 3. The legislatures of two-thirds of the several States shall have the power to repeal any law or part thereof or regulation of the United States or remove any federal judge or justice of the Supreme Court by a resolution describing the law or part thereof or regulation to be repealed or judge or justice to be removed with the effective date of such action being as stated in the resolution or upon obtaining the required approval, whichever date is later. Upon the required approval, the resolution shall be signed by the governors of the states having the approving legislatures, shall contain a certification of approval, and shall be delivered to the President and Congress by the governor last to sign and shall take effect as provided therein.
Section 4. There is hereby established a Board of Governors whose members shall be the governors of the several States, which shall act according to rules adopted by the governors of the several States. The Board of Governors shall have power by a two-thirds vote of its members to make recommendations to Congress or to their State legislatures and to administer all activities assigned to the States or State legislatures herein as they deem in the best interests of the United States. The Board of Governors shall be immune from all taxes.
Section 5. Any approval by the legislatures of the States as used in the Constitution means approval by a majority of all members of each House in their legislative branch.
36th Amendment. The following Thirty-Sixth Amendment shall be added to the Constitution:
Section 1. Whether any law or regulation is unconstitutional as applied to particular circumstances is a question of fact for the trier of fact, though the court can reverse a finding by a jury of constitutionality as applied if it believes the law is unconstitutional as applied.
Section 2. Every citizen shall have standing in court to seek a declaration of the meaning of any part of the Constitution or to challenge the constitutionality or validity of any federal law or regulation or to seek the meaning thereof.
Section 3. No person shall be guilty of a federal crime unless the person’s mens rea has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
Section 4. If any part of a bill that becomes law is determined to be unconstitutional, the whole Law shall be unconstitutional.
Section 5. The Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution is repealed.
Section 6. The “general Welfare” as used in the Preamble of the Constitution refers to the whole of the American people and does not grant Congress any power with respect to any class of people. Congress shall have no discretionary power to spend money in aid of the “general Welfare” as used in Article I § 8 cl. 1 of the Constitution pursuant to a power not expressly enumerated in the Constitution, unless its action is approved by a two-thirds vote of both Houses.
Section 7. Doubts as to whether the President can lawfully assert executive privilege on any matter to avoid releasing information to Congress shall be resolved against the President.
3. Clearing Agent. The governor of the State of _______________ is appointed as a clearing agent for the States to receive and submit to Congress action taken by the States hereunder as provided below or as otherwise implied and incidental to the purposes of this Resolution.
4. Ratification Procedures. The preceding proposed amendments to the Constitution shall be laid before the legislatures of each of the several States. When a State adopts a resolution consenting to this Constitutional Convention Resolution, it shall submit such approval, duly authenticated, to the Governor of the State of _______________. Each State legislature shall consent to Sections 1, 3, and 4 of this Constitutional Convention Resolution and shall consent to such of the proposed amendments in Section 2 as it deems appropriate.
Each proposed amendment herein shall be separately approved by each state legislature as it deems appropriate before ________, 20___. The failure to approve by such date shall be treated as non-approval.
When the governor of the State of _______________ has received resolutions from two-thirds of the several States (currently thirty-four states) consenting to this Constitutional Convention Resolution as provided, such governor shall submit the same, together with proof of the approvals of the legislatures of two-thirds of the several States, to the United States Congress, and, upon such submission, the Constitutional Convention Resolution shall constitute an application under Article V of the Constitution, which shall require the Congress to proceed according to the provisions thereof.
Congress is requested to adopt the proposed amendments to the Constitution without change as its own and promptly to submit them to the States for ratification, failing which it shall call a Convention for approving the amendments. Congress is further requested to specify in such a call whether the ratification of amendments forthcoming from the Convention shall be ratified by three-fourths of the state legislature or conventions in the States. When one or more of the amendments are ratified by legislatures of three-fourths of the several States, they shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of the Constitution, even though other proposed amendments are not ratified or are pending ratification.
